In 2012, 20×109 barrels (bbl) of produced water (referred to herein as production or aqueous fluid) were produced in the oil and gas industry in the United States. Handling produced waste water presents a major challenge for the extraction and production companies. In addition, several states with the highest waste water output suffer from increasingly scarce fresh water resources—aggravating the competition between oil and gas companies and local farmers. Treatment of the waste water produced by oil and gas operations could benefit the agriculture and food production industries in at least two ways: (1) the water requirement of the oil and gas companies could be satisfied without exerting pressure on fresh water sources, and (2) treated produced water could be used for irrigation and livestock use, reuse in oil and gas operations, or other uses.
One factor that hampers treatment of waste water from oil and gas operations is that most production sites are located in remote areas with limited access to electricity. Further, some of the natural gas produced from certain wells might not be economic to refine and transport and thus is burned into the atmosphere. Due to the above considerations, a thermal desalination system that can use waste heat has advantages over current membrane-based systems.
Constructing a desalination plant near a production site might not be economically justified due to the inherently transient quantity of produced water generated by wells. Thus, there is a need for a portable modular thermal desalination system that may be transported for on-site treatment of the produced waste water at an oil and gas operation site. It is to this end that the water distillation/purification/desalinization system of the present disclosure is directed.